Tories 'too afraid of fresh chaos for leadership coup'

Conservative Cabinet ministers will not dare to move against David Cameron
because they know they would plunge the party back into the turmoil of the
1990s, the Prime Minister's allies have said.

David Cameron's stance on immigration is to be challenged by Nigel Mills, the MP for Amber Valley in Derbyshire.Photo: GETTY IMAGES

By James Kirkup and Robert Winnett

6:14AM GMT 08 Mar 2013

Amid whispering on the party's backbenches about a possible move against the Prime Minister, his allies dismissed talk of a Cabinet coup. The Conservatives' poor poll standings and the dismal state of the economy have left many Tory MPs unhappy with their leadership and the Coalition's strategy.

Cabinet ministers including Theresa May, the Home Secretary, are said to be positioning themselves as leadership candidates if Mr Cameron is forced from office.

The Home Secretary holds regular meetings with backbenchers, and has championed policies popular with the party's grassroots, including tougher measures on immigration and crime.

That has led to talk about her ambitions, and Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, this week mocked Mr Cameron about the prospect of Mrs May replacing him.

Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, and Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, are also regarded as potential candidates.

Allies of the Prime Minister said they believed that ministers such as Mrs May would run if a vacancy ever arose.

But they insisted that neither she nor any other senior Cabinet minister would actively try to bring down the Prime Minister, fearing that to do so would repeat the Tory infighting that scarred Sir John Major's government.

A minister close to Mr Cameron said: "No one from that generation would move against him, because they know exactly what would happen to the party if they did. They remember the 1990s and all the damage we did to ourselves then."

Instead, the minister said, any attempt to oust Mr Cameron would come from younger Tories, including those first elected in 2010.

"They don't have the same memory or experience to hold them back," the minister said. "And if they start to think they're going to lose their seats at the election, they could get a bit panicked."

The minister dismissed the prospect of Mr Cameron being ousted by his party, insisting that the Prime Minister remained the Conservatives' most popular figure "by far".

The minister said there was "no chance" of Mr Cameron sacking George Osborne.